Unthinking Mastery with Suzanne Césaire

Authors

Sara Kok University of Bern https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9281-4303

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.44.1.40979

Keywords:

Suzanne Césaire, Mastery, Dehumanism, Martinique, Decolonial theory, Caribbean thought

Abstract

This paper aims to read together Julietta Singh’s Unthinking Mastery and Suzanne Césaire’s The Great Camouflage in order to uncover the narrative spaces in Césaire’s work that can be fruitful for unthinking mastery. I identify four connected themes in Césaire’s work. Surrealism, rejection of doudou-ism and the natural disaster explicitly reject the construction of the Caribbean as one exoticized place and mechanisms of categorization. The only stable identity of the Caribbean is its instability. The figure of the plant-human adds to this and transcends the human/non-human dichotomy in a way that dismantles this central dichotomy altogether.

Author Biography

Sara Kok, University of Bern

Sara Kok is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Bern in Switzerland, working as part of the project "Collective Guilt and Shame". She holds a bachelor’s, and master’s degree in Political Science from the Radboud University Nijmegen, and a research master’s degree in Social and Political Philosophy from the Radboud University Nijmegen. Her PhD project examines the nature and ethics of blame within political, liberatory environments. She approaches this from the fields of feminist philosophy, decolonial philosophy and social epistemology.

Published

2024-06-06

How to Cite

Kok, Sara. 2024. “Unthinking Mastery With Suzanne Césaire”. Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 44 (1):5-18. https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.44.1.40979.